The Walking Dead
by shenandoahok
Summary: David attempts to take his fourteen-year-old son to South Dakota to find his daughter,but a gaggle of zombies are in the way.
1. Chapter 1

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The Walking Dead

(March to Civilization)

Martha put the steaks on the grill, and I could smell them all the way in the front yard where little Jake and I worked on his motor bike. It was approximately twelve noon, and I had noticed police, fire, and ambulance sirens blurring through the city about every five minutes, an unusual occurrence in a city with no more than thirty-eight thousand residents. Several instances of loud screaming and the sound of glass breaking caused me to look around nervously, but I didn't see anything out of the ordinary.

Jake sat on his motorbike, started it up, and I gave him one of those fatherly stares, and asked, "What have I told you about not riding with the proper equipment?"

"Sorry, daddy," he said as he grabbed his helmet, and placed it over his brownish blond curly hair.

Jake loved to ride his bike over in the field behind the house, and we lived in one of those patio communities, a section of the town where the houses nearly sat on top of the neighbor's house. It was hard to tell where my property line ended, and the neighbor's property line began. Jake rode his bike down the street, and all I could see was the red, white, and blue of his helmet in the distance. Startled, I turned to see an ambulance roaring down the street, and I batted an eye. "It's a mess out here today." The next door neighbor, a woman in her early to mid thirties pulled up in her driveway, hopped out of the car, and held her bleeding right wrist.

"Erica, you okay?" I asked.

"Yeah. Yeah. Some dude bit the shit out of me," she said laughingly, "It was the craziest thing too."

"I got some medicines if you need any."

"That's okay. Yeah, it's gonna be alright," she said as she grimaced, and continued to hold her wrist. "The pain is excruciating."

"If you need anything..."

"It's okay. I'll be alright."

I walked in the backyard where Martha continued to throw steaks on the grill, and she looked cute in her little apron, ponytail, and thin rimmed glasses. "You didn't have to invite my parents, ya know?"

"The past is the past," I said as I sat down at the patio table. "We cannot hold grudges against them forever."

"It's just. Well, they kept us apart because they didn't agree with our relationship."

"I know, honey. Somebody has to be grownup about this," I said, "Jake is fourteen now, and needs to know them. Maybe I'll take your pops on a hunting trip during deer-gun season."

"So, he can shoot ya?" She asked as she flipped several of the steaks over. "He'd love nothing more than to pull a Cheney."

Suddenly, I heard a man on a loud bullhorn say, "This is Major Martin with the United States Military. This town is under a quarantine, Please stay inside your homes."

"What the hell?" I asked as I looked over at my wife. "Jake?" I ran over to the back fence, and Jake was speeding across the field to the back gate.

When he arrived to the back gate, he screamed, "I saw Lilly, and she ..."

"What, boy?"

"She was dead," he said, "But not dead."

"Make sense, boy," I complained, "You and your damn stories."

"But, dad ..."

"Just bring your bike in, and go into the house," I said.

It didn't take Martha long to round up the food, go into the house, and turn on the television. She prepared everybody's plate like she always did, and sat next to me on the couch. She was my high school sweetheart, my first love, and nothing would ever stand in the way of that. In the early nineties, it seemed a lot of people still opposed interracial relationships; but these days, nobody cared about anything, especially that. Our oldest son, Luke, and daughter, Mary, were off to college, but Jake was at home about to enter into high school next year. We sat in the living room, ate our meals, and then the President came on the television. He had a stern but worried look on his face, and he wasn't wearing his business suit. It looked more like a jogging suit.

"I've been informed by governments around the world that some sort of virus has turned once decent human beings into flesh eating lunatics. There isn't a place on this planet that isn't infected with this disease, and I urge all citizens to take precautions. If you come across a person running a high fever, showing erratic behavior, and making every attempt to bite you, use whatever force necessary to stop that person."

"Did the President say kill people?" I asked.

The president's bewildered face sent fears through my body like nothing else in my entire life, and a fleet of helicopters flew over the house. The cable abruptly went off the air, and put up an alert message on every channel. For five minutes, I used the remote control to find an active channel, or some idea what was happening, but nothing. Martha sat quietly on the couch, but I could see the confusion in her face, and Jake just remained silent. It was mid afternoon, a noisy afternoon, a day full of fire engines and ambulances blurring through the neighborhood, and as soon as five o'clock rolled by, the screams started, and then the gunfire, and then more screams, and then a moment of silence. I hopped off the couch, and Martha jumped to her feet.

"What?" She asked.

"Gonna get my guns. It's a madhouse, and I need to protect y'all," I said as I stood near the basement door with my hands in my pocket. For the first time in my life, I didn't know what to do, but I just did. I didn't know what to say, but I spoke from a survival mode point-of-view.

"You need help, daddy?" Jake asked.

"Martha, you and the boy pack up any medicines, foods, and clothing," I said, "Anything we might need for an extended trip."

"Okay," Jake said.

I gathered my bow and arrow, two riffles, and two hand guns, and all the ammo that I could find. When I returned, Martha and Jake were nowhere in the house, and I heard a scream coming from next door. I ran onto the porch, and Martha was struggling with the neighbor, Erica Dunce.

Erica's face was pale and dead, and her eyes a bright yellowish brown color, and she had blood dripping off her arm wound. I dropped my weapons on the ground, and as soon as my foot touched the steps of her house, she bit into my wife's arm, and tore away the flesh. I grabbed the woman by the hair, and then flung her off the porch. She hopped to her feet, growled, and I pulled out my Glock Nineteen from the small of my back. It was the weapon that I always carried on my person no matter where I went. She charged me, and I shot her in the chest, but it didn't seem to stop her. She kept walking up the stairs.

"In the head, Daddy," Jake screamed, "Shoot her in the head!"

I fired two more rounds that blew out the back of her head, and she fell to the ground in a pool of blood.

"How did you know that would work?" I asked.

"I didn't," he said, "Just hoped …"

I tore off my cotton shirt, wrapped Martha's arm, and we continued to pack clothing, food stuff, and Martha grabbed the family photo albums.

"Do we need those?" I asked as I piled the stuff in the back of my SUV.

"It's our memories, David," she said softly, "Our lives are reflective in these books."

By the time we gathered into the SUV, Martha had begun grabbing her arm, and complaining about the pain. "Think we should go to the emergency room."

"What for?" Jake asked.

"That damn girl bit me," she said as she held her wrist, "I haven't ever felt pain like this, ever."

I put the back of my palm on her forehead, and she felt like a furnace. "You're definitively running a fever." I opened the car door for her, and sat her inside, and Jake climbed in the back seat. I could hear screams coming from the next block over, but hadn't heard any police sirens in over an hour. We drove slowly out of the neighborhood, and neighbor was eating neighbor. Men were eating dogs. The whole town had gone insane. Plumes of smoke were in the air, and several explosions happened all around us, but it was only a little ways to the hospital, and we continued to keep our heads down as we sped through the city streets. When we arrived to the hospital, a pile of bodies inundated the front lawn, and my wife began to lose her breath.

"Oh my, God," she screamed, "There must be thousands."

We drove past the dead bodies, and kept driving out of Misty, Oklahoma, and ended up on the outskirts of town near her parent's house. In the last fifteen years, we hadn't come to her parent's home because they disapproved of our relationship, and we didn't want to expose Luke, Mary, and Jake to that kind of hatred against their biracial heritage, and the little cookout was a reconciliation of sorts, an idea thought up by Martha's Momma and I. When we drove on to their property, an old white man approximately six feet-two or three stood in the front yard with a rifle.

Martha hopped out of the car, and screamed, "Daddy, it's me." She ran up to her father, gave him a hug, and then motioned for Jake and I. The old man looked up at us, nodded, and we walked into the house. He didn't say much, but he was a lot taller than me. I was only five-foot nine inches, and he looked like a mountain of a man.

"Listen, Red … we won't be long," Martha said, "Just need a place to hold up a bit."

"It's the end game," he said as he held on to his rifle. "It's not about black or white or this and that anymore."

"It's good to hear you say that, daddy."

"It's the end of the world," he said as he lit his pipe, and stood on the front porch. "The dead are walking the Earth, and all I have is this rifle."

"You have us, Mr. Thomas."

"But for how long?" He asked as he opened the door. "Mankind is hanging by a thread."

Mr. Thomas or Red Thomas was a big man, and sat in the living room drinking whiskey, and my wife fell asleep on the couch, and then she started complaining. I knelt beside her, felt her head, and she was burning hot.

"We need to bring her temperature down," I said frantically.

"I'll run a cold bath," Red said as he hopped to his feet. "That should bring her fever down some."

"Give her this Tylenol," Laura, Martha's mom said. She looked just like her daughter except a little older.

Red reached down, picked up my wife, and then I heard him scream. Martha had a chunk of flesh out of his neck.

"Oh shit," I screamed as I grabbed my Glock out the small of my back, cocked it, and pointed in the direction of Red. He threw Martha onto the ground, and he fell forward onto the floor. Laura began screaming, and then Martha bit into her leg, straddled her, and ripped into her neck. When she looked back at me, I grabbed Jake by the hand, ran out the house, and jumped into my car.

"What's going on?" Jake asked.

"Your Momma's infected," I said, "Buckle up."

Martha walked out the house, toward the car, and Jake hopped out of the car, and screamed, "Come on, Momma."

"What are you doing, Jake?"

"It's Momma," he said.

"Get in the car, boy. Now!"

Jake hopped in the car crying, and said, "I hate you."

We drove as far as our gas would take us, and a lot of cars were parked on the side of the road with half eaten bodies inside. We drove on the outskirts of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and the entire city looked as if it had caught fire. The food rations were low, and Jake complained every step of the way. The smell of dead flesh covered the entire city, and rolling up the windows didn't help anything. All I could think about was Martha, and I wondered if my life wouldn't have meant more if she had bitten me. It was crazy thinking, but my heart and mind began to recognized that I've lost my wife, my friend, my lover, the one person that understood me. After Jake had fallen asleep, the warm tears rolled down my face, and darkness began to fall upon the state of Oklahoma. I drove the SUV into a small field about forty-five minutes outside of Tulsa. I had a half a tank of gas, and didn't know one safe place to fill it. At some point, I would have to switch cars or find a rubber hose, and steal some gas from an abandoned car.

Chapter Two

The next morning Jake and I loaded up the vehicle, and saw a creature approximately fifty feet in front of our car. He had a chunk of meat ripped from his stomach, and his eyes looked urine stained brown. I grabbed my shotgun, and blew its head clean off his body. The sound of the blast was much louder than I anticipated because a gaggle of zombies stumbled over the hill, and seemed to be moving rather fast. Jake and I hopped in the SUV, started it, and drove off. We left the hundreds of flesh eaters behind us, and continued to drive until we came across twenty vehicles stuck on the side of the road.

"There has to be gas in one of these cars," I said as I slowly pulled up to a black Honda Accord with two rotting bodies in the front seats. I had found a black rubber hose earlier on the side of the road that I used to cipher gas into a red gas container. As soon as the gas began flowing steadily, the two dead bodies in the front seat awoken, and they tried every possible way to get out of the car except for pulling the handle. I grabbed the gas can, closed the lid, and hopped into my SUV, and drove off.

The CDC sent a message through all open channels that said they were working on a cure for the plague or whatever they decided to call it, and that all people free of bites should make their way to Atlanta, Georgia. Jake and I were headed to New Hope University in South Dakota in order to find his sister. I hadn't heard anything from her in months, but she wasn't the type of kid to call or write or do anything. Sometimes she seemed to be in her own little world, but she knew how to survive. The only things that gave me any comfort was believing that my two college kids had the abilities to survive in the face of a crisis; but I have to be honest and cynical too, the entire world went zombified over night, a simple fact that caught me off guard. So, believing that my daughter was still alive and waiting for her daddy was highly unlikely.

After we drove through Kansas, Jake seemed to completely stop talking about his Momma, but I had hoped he kept her in his thoughts. She was on my mind constantly; and whenever Jake fell asleep, I often cried for my Martha. She was my entire world for so many years that I still found it hard to believe that she was gone or dead or walking dead. In my mind, she seemed more sickly than dead. For some reason, I had hope in a world of hopelessness that I would be back with my baby, and that we would grow old in each other's arms.

I had to focus. Every time I let my mind wander, I put my son in danger. This wasn't a dream or a fairytale or whatever. It was real life, and a zombie could crawl out of any crevice, take a chunk of flesh, and then all would be lost.

When we approached the South Dakota state line on highway Twenty-Nine, cars inundated the road, and my gas meter read empty. It wasn't enough room on the roadway for me to drive, so I would have to pull off onto the grass, and continue down the highway. The smell of rotting flesh permeated through the air, and several of the car doors had blood dripping off of them. I pulled my SUV over to the side of the road, pulled out my rubber hose, and began ciphering fuel from a white Ford pickup truck. Jake stood in front of the car with a shotgun protecting my front, and I tried to protect my rear as the gas flowed into my little red container. A thump—something moved in the trunk of the car behind me—startled me. I pulled my Glock out of its holster, and slowly approached the car. "Follow me, Jake."

"Yes, sir."

Jake went around to the driver's side of the car, and waited for my command to pop the hood. "Okay, Jake. Do it now."

When the hood flung opened, I trained my Glock on the young man's head, and he screamed, "Don't shoot. Please!"

"What's your name, boy?" I asked as I held my weapon to my side.

"Terry Creel," he said as he wiped his face. "Is everybody dead?"

"We're the only … What's that?" I asked as someone or something popped its head over the hill.

"It's a zombie, dad," Jake said as he slowly backed towards the truck.

I grabbed the gas can, and Terry hopped out of the vehicle. "We better get out of here."

"I think you're right," I said as three more zombies crawled over the hill.

We hopped into the SUV, and it didn't move. The wheels spun and spun and spun, and the zombies were nearly on top of us. I exited the car first, and blew the first zombie's head off its body. Suddenly, a mess of zombies crawled over the hill, and it looked like it was more than two or three thousand walking dead.

"Oh, Shit," Terry screamed.

I ran over to one of the parked cars, and checked for keys, but didn't see any. I looked in several of the cars until I found a car with a set of keys. We hopped inside, started it, and took off down the highway back to Nebraska. All I could do was bang my hands on the steering wheel when I realized that all my guns and supplies were in the SUV. In my rear-view mirror, I could see the zombies eyeballing me, and screaming. It almost seemed as if they were setting unsuspecting travelers up to be eaten, but that probably was my imagination playing tricks on me. All I had in my possession was my shotgun with only a few more shells, and my Glock with only two magazines.

"Jake, how many shells you got?"

"Four," he said softly, "Just four."

"Terry, you have a weapon?" I asked.

"Not one. Don't even know how to shoot one," he said.

After about an hour of driving, we came to a small town called Goldbrick, Nebraska. It was a quiet little town with the population of about twenty-five hundred, and nothing seemed to be moving. Cars were all over the street, and half eaten bodies were tossed all over the landscape. When we arrived to the center of the town, I parked the car, and we all exited the vehicle. About two hundred yards from our location stood a huge water tower that read The City of Goldbrick.

"Looking for supplies, guys," I said, "Weapons, food, ammo, shelter, medicines, and anything else we might need."

"Gotcha," Terry said.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 3

I learned quickly that God didn't make heroes in the land of the walking dead, a shocking reality that I had to face when I saw my beloved bite into her father's neck. Honestly, I don't know what makes a hero these days because when dealing with what I've been dealing with for the last week, I don't feel like I have a heroic bone in my body. I felt as if I left a man down on the battlefield, and I hated that feeling. I had no choice, but to run out of the house with my son, and leave my wife behind. At first, I thought the disease caused the walkers to go mad; but now that I've smelled them, I believed the disease actually killed them and brought them back as the un-dead. I'm not sure the CDC or whatever organization has to deal with these types of matters can bring any of them back. The dead out numbered the living, and it was evident in every small town we hit for supplies.

Goldbrick was a quaint little town from what I could see, and everything seemed to be on the main street. They didn't have any cheesy strip malls like Oklahoma, but every building had history behind it. If things weren't the way they were, I would have enjoyed a town like this with its brick roads, rustic buildings, and mom-and-pop corner stores.

To my amazement, Goldbrick had a gun store in the middle of the town, and the inside walls looked as if the people inside the store had a major battle with a flock of zombies. The smell of the dead was like thick steam, and it stuck to everything. Several dead bodies were strewn outside of the store, and I slowly walked past them never removing my eyes from their faces. I pulled the door open slowly, and Jake ran into the store with his weapon at the ready. He put his hands over his mouth as he tried to block out the smell of the rotting corpse that laid against the far wall. Terry found a stick from somewhere, and poked the shriveled man several times, but he didn't budge. He had poked a few bodies on the street, but they seemed to be truly dead too. The old man's face looked emaciate, and he had dried blood on the corners of his mouth. He looked like he had fed on somebody, and he was pretty sloppy about it too. Terry poked the man one last time, and he started to show signs of being alive, and I heard Jake pump his gun.

"Don't shoot him," I said as I wiped off the butt of my weapon. Jake looked anxious to pump a few rounds into the decaying corpse, but I couldn't allow it. I knew the other zombies were near, and would hear the blast of the weapon. After I raised my shirt over my face, I took the butt of my shotgun, and beat him back to sleep. I did everything within my power to keep the blood from splashing me in the face. As I beat the zombie, I turned my head. Jake and Terry turned their faces at all the brutality, but I did what had to be done, and with every blow I kept my head turned so I wouldn't get any blood on my face. I killed him. I thought about letting Jake put a bullet between his eyes to speed things up, but I knew a gun blast would wake up the dead, and I didn't want that to happen. Nobody wanted that to happen.

Blood contamination was a real problem, and whatever virus caused all the people to turn into zombies had to be more infectious than any virus on the planet, including HIV. I hadn't ever heard of anybody catching AIDS from a bite; but with this virus, a simple bite, a graze of the teeth turned the victim into a zombie almost immediately.

"Grab what you can. Leave the rest for the next helpless souls," I said, "We'll check for a school bus or some other big vehicle later, but for now ..."

Terry walked around to the back of the counter, and threw a bunch of t-shirts mocking Muslims on top of the counter, and then pulled out several large caliber guns. He laid four shot guns across the counter with the rounds, and said, "Shoot, we have a real arsenal now."

"We'll need it," I said as I picked up one of the nice shotguns, and loaded it. "Is there any handguns down there?"

"Three revolvers," he said, "Looks like a thirty-eight."

Something, possibly a set of feet, hit the ground, and fumbled around in one of the back rooms, and Jake had his shotgun at the ready. He gazed down the hallway with his shotgun at the ready, and then looked over at Terry. I slowly walked through the narrow hallway to the back of the building, and I could hear something scraping against the floor. It sounded like somebody was dragging their feet on the floor. Terry moved in front of me, put his left hand on the door, and then pushed it open, and an old zombie turned towards us, growled, and then lunged for Terry.

"It's a walker," Terry screamed as he dove out-of-the-way of the beast.

I flew into the room, and shot the zombie in the head, and its brains scattered all over the back wall. The smell was unbearable, and all I could do was pull my shirt over my face. I hadn't smelled anything like it since my father and I discovered my grandfather decaying in his trailer house nearly twenty-five years ago. The smell of a dead body smoldering in the summer heat was something that I would never forget, and a zombie smelled worse than that. The zombie that I killed in the front of the store didn't smell as bad as the one that lay dead in front of my eyes. He must have been one of the first ones turned or something because he had a lot more decay than the one up front.

"We need to find some goggles and some masks," I said as the zombie's brains and blood dripped down the wall. "If that zombie blood gets into our eyes or into a wound, we'll be infected for sure."

"We passed by a pharmacy a few buildings down," Terry said, "They probably have something."

When I turned around to walk out of the room, I heard another thump coming from behind the wall, and Terry put his left ear to the wall to try to get a listen. I didn't notice any hidden panels in the room, but I knew something or somebody had to be behind the walls.

"Somebody's back there, David," he said as he tapped the wall repeatedly.

"Whose back there?" I asked as I kicked the wall.

"Hold on," a female said, "I'm coming out." A panel slid open, and a young girl no more than fifteen walked out wearing military fatigues, holding a rifle, and with a box of military rations. Dropping the rations on the ground, she looked over at the zombie, and said, "He's been chasing me forever."

"Why didn't you just shoot him?" Jakes asked.

"Out of rounds," she said as she laid her weapon against the wall.

She had dark hair with military style combat boots, and brown eyes, and she had a mild case of acne on her forehead, but still an attractive young woman.

"Are you the only surviver?" I asked.

"Yeah, everybody else turned in the initial wave," she said, "My whole family is dead."

"What is your name?" I asked.

"Dora Sable," she said.

"I'm David. That's Terry, and that's my son, Jake."

"Hey," she said as she gave a half wave, "Nice to meet y'all."

"We're out of here as soon as we find some medicines," I said, "Your welcome to come."

"Don't have anything keeping me here now," she said, "Family is dead. Everybody is dead."

Terry walked out of the room, headed to the front of the gun shop, and then screamed, "Shit."

"What's wrong?" I asked as I ran to the front of the store. When I looked out the glass door, the street was inundated with zombies, and I didn't have a clue of what to do. They were pacing back and forth in front of the door, and I didn't see any escape. I quickly locked the door, and Terry sat down on the floor with his head between his legs.

"Dammit ..." I screamed.

"We're dead," Jake said as he sat down on the floor. "It's the guns."

"Any gun fire or loud noises brings them a running," Dora said as she looked out the front door. "Any loud noises draws them like moths to flames. They can smell us too. You're not the first group to come through here."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"My family and I wandered into this town yesterday. They trapped us in the store. My pops tried to fight them, but ..."

"Thought you grew up here," I said.

"Nope. From Tulsa. I made it into this gun shop, and found the little hideaway in the back room. It's how I survived."

Dora continued to look out the window, and watched an older woman closely.

"Do you know her?" I asked.

"Did. She was my Momma," she said as she stepped away from the door with a frown on her face. "Should have put a bullet in her head too."

Jake hopped off the ground, dusted off his pants, and then slung his shotgun over his shoulder. He reached behind the counter, grabbed a few black t-shirts, and threw one to Dora, Terry, and I.

The sound of glass breaking—a zombie hit the door with a brick—startled me. Terry tried to hop to his feet, but a Zombie came through the front door, and landed on top of him. He wrestled with the zombie, and then I heard him scream in pain. Dora grabbed a shotgun, some rounds, and shot two zombies as they raced through the front door. I pointed my shotgun to the zombie that had Terry trapped on the ground, and pulled the trigger, and blood flew all over the wall. The entire pack of zombies charged the store, and I grabbed Terry by the arm, and then we ran to the back room, out the back door, and a gaggle of walkers ran around the corner of the store, trying to cut us off. One of the zombies nearly grabbed Dora, but she shot it in the head with her shot gun, and then blew another zombie away as it tried to claw her face.

Jake blew the head off a zombie as we approached a car parked sideways on the grass, and Dora laid up against the car for leverage as she continued to unload her rounds into as many zombies as she could. The car had keys in the ignition, and I started it, and then Jake grabbed Dora, and pulled her into the car. I ran over two zombies, and kept driving until I left out-of-town, but Terry didn't look too well.

"Did you see that?" I asked.

"What?" Jake asked as he reloaded his weapon.

"The zombies used a brick to bust the window," I said.

"So," Dora said, "What does that have to do with anything?"

"They're using tools," I said as I slapped my hand on the dashboard. "This means they can think."

When we arrived to the highway, Terry was bent over at the waist, and he appeared to be crying.

"What's wrong, Terry?" Jake asked.

"Pull over," Terry said, "Just pull over."

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"I'm bitten," he said, "One of those bastards bit me."

I pulled over immediately, and Terry exited the vehicle, and looked over at the sunset. I had wondered if one of the zombies had chomped into him in the gun shop, and then I just thought the struggle with the zombie hurt him. If I had known he had a bite mark, I probably would have killed him before we ever made it to the car.

"Knew I wouldn't survive this," he said as he fell to his knees and wept. "What God would allow this?"

It was the same question that I had asked myself a million times, and Dora hopped out of the car with her rifle at the ready. She was like stone: cold and unforgiving. "You know what we must do," she said.

"Just hold on a sec," I said as I looked over at her. "What do you want, Terry?"

"He'll change, and kill us all," she screamed, "I know. I know. I had to put a bullet in my own father."

He looked over at me, and said, "Just give me a gun. Just a gun."

I handed him my Glock, and said, "Just keep walking, man. When you start to turn, you know what to do."

Terry stood to his feet, straightened his shirt, walked toward the sunset, and Dora watched him closely. I could see the tears rolling down his face, and Jake wept too. I hadn't known him long, but he was already like family.

"Just better to let one of us do it. At least your soul won't be condemned," Dora said as she sat against the car.

"Like God matters," Jake said, "This is God's fault."

"Some scientist somewhere playing God caused this," I said, "Doubt God's hand is anywhere in this equation."

The sound of a single gun shot starlted us, and Terry fell to the ground, dead. We hopped into the car, and Jake asked, "You're gonna leave your gun?"

"It's infected with his blood," I said, "Just leave it."

Dora didn't say much as we headed back towards South Dakota, but I could tell that she had a lot on her mind. I had spent plenty of time teaching my boy how to hunt, and I could tell that she had plenty of hunting skills too. She blew a way several zombies without thinking about it, and she was willing to put a bullet into Terry's head just to save his soul. She had the ability to completely disconnect from another person without any hesitation. I seemed to always hesitate. I hesitated with my wife, with Terry, and with every zombie I had to kill.

"How old are you, Dora?" I asked as I looked up in the rear-view mirror. She had her eyes closed, and looked as if she was resting.

"Sixteen," she said, "Just turned sixteen last week."


End file.
